Preparing pre-service mathematics teachers to teach in multilingual classrooms : a community of practice perspective.

[摘要] This study takes a particular look at mathematics teacher education communities ofpractice (CoPs) in order to provide rich descriptions of the CoPs and make claims aboutits relation/in relation to teacher preparation and particularly the preparation of preserviceteachers for teaching mathematics in multilingual classrooms. The threedimensions of communities of practice proposed by Wenger (mutual engagement, sharedrepertoire and joint enterprise) were used in conjunction with Mortimer and Scott’snotion of meaning making as a dialogic process as a theoretical lens to gain an entry intothe nature of communities of practice in pre-service mathematics teacher educationclassrooms. Data was collected through pre-observation interviews of 12 teachereducators at four Universities in one Province in South Africa in Phase One of the study.A methodological approach based on Wenger’s CoP theory and Mortimer and Scott’sdialogic process was developed and used to analyse classroom observation videos of fourof these teacher educators’ classroom communities of practice in two universities inPhase Two of the study. Using the privileged practices in the CoPs as points of departureand how these practices shaped and were shaped by other dynamics in the CoPs, thefindings emerging from the study indicate that within the multiply layers of teachereducation, there is an overarching emphasis given to the acquisition of mathematicalcontent. Nevertheless, the communicative approaches and patterns of discourse used bythe different teacher educators opened up different possibilities as far as preparing preserviceteachers for teaching (in multilingual classrooms) is concerned.Wenger’s community of practice theory has found applications in different spheres of lifeand in different organisational and educational settings. Its use to understand and describemathematics pre-service classrooms is, however, still largely unexplored. A theoreticalcontribution that this study makes lies in the extension of Wenger’s CoP theory to includedialogic processes. A methodological contribution lies in the development of anorganisational language (based on Wenger’s three dimensions of CoP) to characterisepre-service teacher education classrooms.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand